Lorraine Sando stands at one of her creations Thursday, April 3, 2014 at her work space in Shelton, Conn. Sando repurposes vintage items and turns them into one of a kind bars at her business, Speakeasy Home Bars. less

Lorraine Sando stands at one of her creations Thursday, April 3, 2014 at her work space in Shelton, Conn. Sando repurposes vintage items and turns them into one of a kind bars at her business, Speakeasy Home ... more

Everything old is new again, thanks to a new Shelton business that's repurposing antiques and artifacts so they can play home to people's private libation collections. Speakeasy Home Bars lives up to its name, for it references secret drinking establishments of the Prohibition era, when illegal liquor had to be hidden away.

"I love vintage furniture," Sando said. "I was thinking I wanted to take things that were old, that people didn't want anymore, and repurpose them into something they can use."

Sando has taken objects, ranging from armoires, vintage radios, stereo cabinets and dressers, and turned them into home-style speakeasies.

"I'd made a couple for relatives, and their friends came over and loved them," said Sando, who has two grown children and sees the business as a metaphor for her own life. "I'm reinventing myself, as well as reinventing the furniture, into something else."

Sando designed a marble top cabinet bar that includes a door from a church and a fireplace hearth, for Larry Vecchione of Stratford.

"I get more compliments on that bar than anything in the house," he said. "Everybody asks me where I bought it. But the bottom line is you can't duplicate this bar. It's one of a kind."

Sando previously operated Fairfield Sweet Cakes for five years, before selling it.

"So I love business, and this one I have a total passion for," said Sando, teaming with childhood friend Michael Corsano of Monroe, a retired firefighter and part-time builder with a penchant for assembling anything from scratch.

"I'm pretty creative. I can make anything work," Corsano said, saying that Sando is "like a cousin," and that she talked about starting the business for years. "She comes up with good ideas and she says, `Can we make this work?' "

"His dream was always to make furniture," Sando said of Corsano. "He does a phenomenal job."

Catherine Cackowski, who recently moved to Charlotte, N.C., from Milford, had an old armoire that Speakeasy repurposed. "I had actually gotten it from my grandmother. It meant something to me, the piece, but it was too bulky, too cumbersome. I had no idea what to do with it, but she figured it out," Cackowski said.

Sando and Corsano have set up shop at 415 Howe St., in Shelton. It is open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The only drawback to making these creations will be parting with them when they're sold, Sando said. "I'm actually going to be sad when they go."